On October 5, 1916 my Mummu was born. She and I were sidekicks, and until junior high when life got busier, I spent most weekends with her in her four-room, second floor apartment in Fitchburg.
Structure was key to keeping things running. Mummu worked in
a yarn factory and got up at 5:00 am Monday through Friday. She never drove and
walked to work for a 6:00 am start. One room was cleaned each weekday after work during
the commercial breaks of the soaps. Laundry was done on weekends using the
washer in the big, dark, slightly scary basement and hung to dry on the clothes
lines on her porch. Ironing was performed on Mondays after work in front of the
soaps playing on the giant TV with the loud remote clicker.
Many Saturdays, when we weren’t watching candlepin bowling or horse racing or golf on TV, we walked downtown to shop, occasionally taking a shortcut through Laurel Hill Cemetery, which was creepy because I always had nightmares about that place. Rarely, and only if it was raining or exceptionally hot, we took a taxi back home from the taxi stand on Main Street.
Mummu's cups and saucers from Finland. |
Mummu wore white nursing shoes to work, which were polished every
Sunday (often by me) and the laces washed by hand. She always wore a
skirt, blouse and white ankle socks with the nursing shoes, and I still have the
gray and white striped cotton work skirt with a metal zipper she wore for years.
One summer when I was probably eight or nine, Mummu took me to the factory to show me where she worked. There were wood floors, big machines, and dust motes dancing in the light. It was a vacation week and the shop was closed for machine maintenance. She was a union rep, and once took me to a union meeting at the British American Club. I had no idea what the room of adults was discussing and was bored out of my mind. That union meeting stands out as the only time I did something with Mummu where I wished I was doing something else.
Mummu and me, 2001. |
Mummu died in 2005. She is buried in the only piece of land she ever owned -- a plot at Forest Hill Cemetery in Fitchburg. I was living in Tennessee at the time,
and flew home in time to see her before she passed away. I miss her. I think
about her when I make her recipes for carrot cake and merengue cookies and
avoid making the complicated recipe for the raspberry truffle brownies that I
loved. I think about her when I wear the black raw silk dress she bought in 1960 for her brother’s
funeral that was one of the first vintage dresses in my collection. I think about her when I see any
of the many sweaters she knit for me, and when I see her green and white coffee cups and saucers
from Finland in my buffet. All the time, basically.
Happy birthday Mummu. Miss you.
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